Archive for the ‘writting’ Category

I am proud of BitterKat and her running, and how she’s building upon last year’s victories for more running fun in 2012.I’m proud of SnarkyKat and her new Master’s degree. I’m proud of Laurgs and setting up an studio for The Arts.

Always afraid to say them out loud…but…here’s goes.

Goals for the Year 2012

Write novel, “The Draft”. There will be no orcs in this, though it will be about a high-school, so probably just as much profanity as an orc based story. I will write first draft, and revise it, then send it off to fools that volunteer…I mean friends that don’t know any better, to see what they have to say.

Write “A Short History of Agriculture before Columbus”, a non-fiction. Because, I like biting off more than I can chew. I’ve thought about what needs to be done just to do the research, I figure I need to read about 50 books, a couple hundred articles/chapters, dozens of interviews, scores of videos, a couple of field trips… This project is impossible, and will be horribly done. But, in the spirit NaNoWriMo…Go. Write. WIN!

Read 28 books, which would be two more than 2011.

Blog three times a week for my ultra-cool readers.

Watch a game of every NBA team.

Enroll in school.

Goals for January – because sometimes, goals need to be bite sized

write 300 words per day

Goals for the week – or, there are always little tiny baby steps to take

Less than 70 minutes of TV/Facebook/web-surfing a day. Srsly, how pathetic is that?

Go to bed, on average, before 11:30pm

pushups – five days, for a total of 14

guitar – five days, for a total of 40 minutes

Wow, those goals for the week are pretty embarrassing, huh? Well, step aside pride, and off to something slightly better, yes?

Five stars, meaning, I recommend everybody read The Shining by Mr Stephen King.

I was so, very, happy to have an well written book to read. I hate to admit, that many times I have thought the same things that the scary monster/father/husband thought. I guess that’s the truth of horror-fiction, there are monsters in all of us.

Parts I liked:

The writer-character thinking about the patron-artist relationship “We’ll always be friends, and the dog collar I have on you will always be ignored by mutual consent, and I’ll take good and benevolent care of you. All I ask in return is your soul. Small item….Remember my talent friend, there are Michelangelos begging everywhere in the streets of Rome...” Yup, as my portrait of me-artist-as-a-youngster, I thought similar things, and have seen others say art is about freedom, ignoring the fact that art is about communication.

The child-character thinking about adults: “But grownups were always in a turmoil, every possible action muddied over by thoughts of consequences, by self-doubt, by selfimage, by feelings of love and responsibility. Every possible choice seemed to have drawbacks, and sometimes he didn’t understand why the drawbacks were drawbacks.” I love how King writes from child’s point of view, giving credit to what things kids can figure out, giving them credit for being smarter than we normally believe, and yet, admitting confusion and misunderstanding.

Nice visual: “He let one finger play over the words for a moment, the pad of his index finger denting against the cogs, running smoothly over the wheels.”

Let me state, for the record, “Paperback Writer” is the best song by the Beatles. Opens with Beatles a capella, killer riff, Motown-esque background vocals, awesome Paul McCartney bass fills. And, I think the song put the idea in my head of being a writer when I was a young boy. And every since, I’ve always wanted to be a writer.

Well…I declare that I am a writer. Not a good one, not an original one, heck, probably not even competent. But, I’ll say it, “I am a writer”. I would like to thank the Filthy Critic, my favorite movie critic, for introducing me to NaNoWriMo, that helps a lot. Just getting pixels on the screen, or ink on paper.

And I did…85 consecutive days, Oct 31st, 2010 – January 23rd, 2011. I wrote every day. Granted, some days were very, very minimal. (Like the eight words on January 1st.) But during that time, it averaged more than 900 words per day, blogged every day of November, and did NaNoWriMo in 29 days. I know how to put words on paper. Now, I gotta learn how to put the right words in the right places*.

And, of course, all good things must come to an end. I was looking at “tips for writers” on i09.com, and lost track of time, and thus didn’t blog on January 24th. Which kinda bummed me out, and so I took some more days off. But, I’m back on the writer wagon, and my new streak is now, two days.

The other day, I was looking back at some old fiction stuff I had written. And there were a few moments that I was happy with what I had written. And I guess that’s the reward, and that’s the reason I write, for me. My stories for me. And this blog so that I can look back and remember the wonderful stories of my babies growing up.

* J.S. Bach, “Music is easy, all you have to do is play the right note, at the right time.”

So…after yesterday’s thrilling post… I still qualify for NaBloPoMo-January2011, the topic was deemed “Friends”.

So let me begin, with story from my childhood…when I was a youngster, growing up in Missouri, we lived on a large piece of land. Not sure why, it could have been a farm, but my father was a machinist. It was a bit of a walk to our closest neighbors, we had a drive way that was at least a hundred yards long. There was a pond, half way up the drive, between the house and the dirt road. Heck, we even had a “Party-line” for phone service. Occasionally my parents friends would visit, and bring their kids.

One time, the kids were walking around the pond, looking for snakes or frogs, or, as a vivid memory I have, a snake eating a frog. My dog, was swimming in the pond, as dogs do, because it is so much easier to get the humans to smell like dog if the dogs shake themselves dry. One of the kids started throwing rocks into the pond. I didn’t want my best friend (the dog) hurt so I yelled at the kid to stop. He stopped throwing into the pond, and threw one at me. He was a good shot, because it hit me right on the forehead. I remember sobbing, walking up the drive, drops of blood dripping through my fingers, speckling rocks in the gravel. I remember being held by a parent, crying, wearing my favorite blue jean jacket (and not a cool jeans jacker, a very off style one…well…it was the 70s), and the father of the boy saying that I was a brave little Indian, which did cheer me up.

I didn’t write 100,000 words, without counting NaNoWriMo. But I did write about 82 thousand words, plus successfully completed NaNoWriMo.

I averaged three blog entries a week. (Actually 3.1 per week, averaging 187 words per entry.)

I am happy to say, that I have written, either blog entry or one of my silly novels, every single day since Oct 31st! TheGoogle says it takes somewhere between 21 and 66 days to form a new habit. So I think this makes me a writer, although, slow since I’m averaging only 300 words per day. I think in 2011 I’ll start working on quality, much to your delight, Sportsfans!

And…the most exciting new thing…remember, exciting also means scary…I began teaching Sunday school.

I did it.A day before the deadline I finished too. I even had three days of zero words.

Eh, so what. Maybe I’ve out grown this game, and maybe it’s time to move on. I have been tracking progress this past weekend, and when I was making good time, I average 29 words per minute. So, doing the math, NaNoWriMo is only about 29 hours of writing, if I can stay focused. Maybe that’s the challenging part. Staying foc… hey…did you just see that? A shiny thing. I wonder …

I love T.S. Eliot. I’ve heard it said that sometimes TS can be a bit of a bummer. I love Part Five, of “East Coker” and find it very optimistic, in a roundabout sort of way.

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

I love it. Here we have one of the best poets ever, and he feels like an incompetent hack at his craft. But that’s not the point in art, sport, life, relationship with God. “For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”

For me more than twenty years have passed since I became an adult. And even though my body and mind are not as strong or flexible, and I certainly don’t feel any wiser, I just need to keep trying.

Hey sports fans, I to finishing NaNoWriMo on the 29th. But I never charted out a pace chart for 1,724 wpd.

by the numbers

17 days better than 1667 words

Thursdays, worst day, averaged 1025 words

Mondays, best days, averaged 2388

worst day, Thurs, Nov 5th – 170 words

best day, Monday, Nov 30th – 5917 words

at 9PM, Mon, Nov 30 – I needed 1559 words per hour to finish

Our good friend at IndecisiveRamblings asked if it was a tough last day. No, it wasn’t. I did most of that writing after we put the childrens to bed, (thanxies to MyBetterHalf for wrestling them back into their beds. Multiple times). I didn’t think I would be able to finish, Sunday, Nov 29th was very unproductive on the writing front (but good on family visit, and finish a work project), so I didn’t really care. I felt good about my progress, liked my story enough, …what kept me going, was hoping that it would help Seattle stay #1 in words written. I also thought it would be sort of funny if I didn’t win by only a couple hundred words. There was very little stress for me last night.

I had lots of crazy fun back in 2005, my first time, and it was a serious adrenalin rush as I was finishing.

2006, a bunch of my friends were inspired by me and they won. I participated, didn’t finish.

2007, after seeing how much fun my friends had, I wanted to do it again. It wasn’t fun. It was a chore. I knew I could do it, so there was no excitement.

This year? I had a lot of fun. I did most work on bus commute, and after I did dishes after putting the childrens to bed. It was low stress, because I knew I could do it, and I would stay up late on TheFacebook encouraging a good friend from high school who I talked into participating. I am happy to say that she finished way back on the 27th.

And it all started for me, because of my favorite movie critic, The Filthy Critic, challenged his readers back in 2005.

Soon, my wonderful Sportsfans, I will be going into the crazy land of NaNoWriMo. Wish me luck. So far, I have two to travel with me, so it won’t be totally terrifying.

But a few stories before I go.

The other morning, MsSqueaky wanted into the bathroom, it was time to get ready to go, but I let her in. A few minutes later, I returned to see her holding her baby doll, while the baby is sitting on her potty. Yes, it is time to start the potty training for MsS. Then, Ms S took the baby to the changing pad, and got a wipe, because her baby doll had “owie butt”.

Mr Grunty, the other morning, wanted me to draw. “Papa draw ping” (or did he say “pain”?) Mr G politely lasked. This went on for a few minutes, Mr G would get more and more upset, until finally, I realized he was saying “plane”.

The other morning, Mr Cuddles woke up around 4am, had a diaper that needed changing, and after we changed it, with a big smile on his face, Mr C did a little kicking-dance laying on the bed, looked at MyBetterHalf and me, as if to say, “Mommy, Papa…I’m awake, you’re awake…let’s hang out! It’ll be awesome!”

Bedtime rituals these days:

Mr Grunty has been falling out of his bed. This doesn’t wake his siblings.

Ms Squeaky has been sleep walking, we think, she’ll wander around, and sometimes go back to her room, sometimes just go to our bed and stand there. (If she’s awake, she knows how to crawl in, or ask for help.) Once, MyBetterHalf saw MsS just standing at a doorway, eyes closed.

Mr Cuddles, usually nurses a bit before bed, and then will either sleep through the night, or, wake up at either midnight, or 4am. If midnight, I can usually cuddle him back to sleep. If 4am, he’ll want to be nursed back to sleep.

This morning, Mr G & Ms S, had their baby dolls, (Mr G has “pink-baby” and Ms S has “blue-baby”), and they were teaching their baby dolls how to crawl on the floor in front of Mr Cuddles.

At lunch time, Mr G & Ms S were happy to take turns and feed their baby brother prunes & pears whilst they sat on papa’s lap.